Wednesday, 19 June 2013

"Peacemakers" against peace.

Original Thinking by
Barry Shaw.

“Peacemakers” against peace.

In a
Jerusalem Post article (“Blessed are the peacemakers” June 7, 2013)
Gideon D.Sylvester, the British United Synagogue rabbi in Israel, told the
anecdote of two member of the Bereaved Parents Forum, an association of Israeli
and Palestinian parents whose children have been killed in the conflict, who
travelled to a meeting held at the British House of Lords. Their host took them
aside and explained, “On this side of the room sit the Lords who back the
Palestinians, and on the other side will be the friends of Israel. Now you each
know your supporters and opponents,” as if they were entering into a prize
fight contest. The bereaved parents were shocked. “We have set aside our
grievances and have come to share ideas about uniting for peace, and you who
live in the tranquility of England wish to make divisions! If you cannot help,
at least don’t make matters worse.”

This is the
deep feeling I get every time I hear of the confrontational actions and words of
groups such as Peace Now and many others who receive handsome funding from
European governments, church groups, and charitable organizations, and use them
to foster hate and division.

When Israel
is ready and able to supply Palestinians with the abundance of natural gas it
has recently discovered, natural gas that will reduce the household and
industrial burden in Palestinian society and improve their environment with its
green energy, who will stand in its way? The BDS Movement, the phony peace
activists that never give up in preventing cooperation between Israel and
Palestinians, or the political leaders of the Palestinian Arabs? Their policies and their protests are absurd!

Emphasis
must be given to groups that genuinely assist in the process of mutual respect
and assistance rather than perpetuating the demonization and hatred. It is to the groups that use their humanity to
open dialogue and lend a helping hand that funding and recognition must be
placed, not to those who seek to become a wedge between the two parties.

I have been
involved in challenging the vicious confrontation with Israel by groups
claiming to represent the best interest of the Palestinians. They have, by
their words and deeds, set back the peace process for decades. Their message is
one of fraud, lies, and hypocrisy when they could have been promoting ways to
nurture mutual respect between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. The boycotters,
set against the huge economic and technological strides taken by Israel have been
a pinprick, a minor irritant, to the Israeli economy. Instead they could have
used whatever biased influence they have to improve the daily lives and fortune
of the average Palestinian. Instead, into this breach step companies such as
Soda-Stream who have given numerous jobs, promotion, respect, and a brighter
future to young Palestinian Arab men and women. For their pains they have been
targeted and pilloried by organizations that waste their time, energy, and
resources on negative actions.

There are
Palestinians, and all too many of their supporters, who criticize (and worse)
what they call “economic normalization” between Israelis and the
Palestinians. If that means Israelis helping to put food on the table of a
Palestinian family in Ramallah, food earned by gainful employment, so be it.
Guilty as charged. Economic normalization must be part of the “bottom up”
part of the peace process that involves having both sides get to know and
respect each other.

There were
sections of the Palestinian leadership that protested the participation of
Israeli and Palestinian businessmen in a session of the World Economic Forum in
May, 2013. After the “Breaking the
Impasse” meetings were held by the Dead Sea between Israeli and Palestinian
businessmen, at precisely the same time as the US Administration was trying to
kick start the peace process, Murad Sudani, of the Palestinian Writers Union,
threatened to publish a “blacklist” of the Palestinian individuals and
companies who are doing business with their Israeli counterparts. Don’t they want the Palestinian economy to
grow? Apparently, not.

Munib
al-Masri, whose family is traditionally the backbone and respected pillars of
the Palestinian society and perhaps the wealthiest Palestinian in the world, doesn’t
agree with them. He condemned those who threaten Palestinian businessmen and those
who act against normalization with Israel.

Sixty five
farmers, water experts, and land reclamation professionals from the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip attended the international agricultural exhibition
in Tel Aviv in June, 2013, together with a further two hundred West Bank
farmers. “We want to export agricultural goods to Israel and improve neighborhood
ties,” they declared bravely. “All
the time, we and Israel are in contact,” admitted Mahmoud Ikhlain, the
chairman of the Beit Lahiya Cooperative in Gaza.Tons of Gazan-grown
agricultural products flow across the Kerem Shalom border crossing into Israel
for domestic consumption, or for Palestinian export. It is this mutual
cooperation that mainly benefits the Palestinian economy that many who claim to
be “peacemakers” aim to destroy. The last thing they want is dialogue.

Tawfiq
Tirawi of the Fatah Central Committee condemns the direct contact between
Palestinians and Israelis. He claims that only a political peace can save
Palestinian dignity, he is wrong. There are thousands of Palestinian families
who, each one personally, have claimed their own dignity and self-respect by
working alongside Israelis. The political solution has stalled through people
like Tirawi who put up barricades rather enter into a meaningful dialogue with
Israel. People like Tirawi are part of the problem, not the solution. They
belong to the Palestinian political rejectionism that has been the major factor
of the lack of political progress. They must be prevented from blocking the
increasingly successful “bottom up” economic process.

Israelis
can, and do, lend a useful helping hand that improves the lives of Palestinian
Arab families. They must be encouraged to increase this benevolence. As
Sylvester reminded us in his interesting article, every major Jewish prayer
ends with the desire for peace. As Jews utter this prayer they physically take
three steps backwards and bow. This signifies that we are forced to change our
position and respect the Lord if we are genuine in our desire for peace. If you
were to take a survey among Israelis about the need to compromise for peace with
the Palestinians, the overwhelming majority are prepared to take those three
steps back for peace and bow to the inevitability. Can we honestly say the same
about the Palestinian leadership, Palestinian society generally, the assorted
anti-Israeli organizations who all claim to represent the best interests of the
Palestinians, and the so-called “peacemakers.”

If push
comes to shove, are they prepared to pray and act for a genuine and fair peace
while taking those all-important three steps back from their hatred of Israel
that really is the genuine obstacle to peace.

Barry Shaw
is the Special Consultant on Delegitimization Issues to The Strategic Dialogue
Center at Netanya Academic College. He
is also the author of ‘Israel Reclaiming the Narrative.’www.israelnarrative.com